Citing Birdsall case, Christie calls for campaign-finance overhaul

Governor Christie said Tuesday that an engineering firm’s admission this month that it illegally concealed hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions is a sign that the state needs to overhaul its campaign finance laws.

Christie said he has tried to talk to Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, D-Essex, about updating the state’s campaign finance laws, including a requirement that only contributions over $300 be reported.

Birdsall Services Group pleaded guilty on June 13 to charges of money laundering and making false representations for government contracts. Authorities said the company’s executives violated state campaign finance laws by making $686,000 in donations over six years without reporting them to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission or to the government agencies that awarded them contracts. The executives hid the contributions by disguising them as individual donations for under $300 — the minimum amount that must be reported to the state — from employees, who were later illegally reimbursed in the form of bonus payments, authorities said.

Christie said at a press conference in Mt. Laurel on Tuesday that he wants a complete overhaul of the state’s campaign finance laws, including forcing unions, which typically donate to Democrats, to abide by campaign finance limits. He tried to impose that restriction by executive order in 2010 but was rebuffed by the courts.

“I am willing to engage with them in a discussion of campaign finance reform, but only if everything is on the table and I mean everything, because this is obviously a system that doesn’t work very well,” Christie said.

As a candidate seeking a second term, Christie, a Republican governor, said he knows first-hand that the system doesn’t work.

“I can tell you as someone who is out there raising money in it, it’s a very cumbersome, confusing, difficult system and, candidly, I don’t think it’s very effective in terms of preventing what it’s attempting to prevent,” he said.

The Star-Ledger published a database Sunday that listed hundreds of politicians it said benefited from Birdsall’s secret campaign funds, including several in Bergen County. That list also included an illegal $300 donation to U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, which was secretly routed through one of its employees.

Pallone, one of four Democrats vying for his party’s nomination to fill the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s seat, said through his campaign Monday that he would donate $15,050 he received from Birdsall over the past decade to charity.

Sweeney – who was also listed in the Ledger’s database as having received money from Birdsall – said Monday that he also supports changing the state’s campaign-finance laws.

“I think we need to reform our election rules because what you’re doing is you’re forcing people, I think, to try to find ways to get around things that don’t make a lot of sense because they’re not consistent from county to county, from town to town,” he said.

Sweeney said he would like to see the law changed to require all contributions to be disclosed publicly within 48 hours so taxpayers can see if a lawmaker is voting on an issue that benefits a donor.

“Every single dollar should be reported and recorded and it should be 48-hours’ notice,” he said. “We should set the limits that are reasonable and fair and go from there.”

State Sen. Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, who is challenging Christie in November, said she also would welcome changes to the state’s campaign-finance laws.

“I believe that all political groups should be transparent and would support any legislation to make that a reality,” she said in a statement.